


Long Distance

by Kalgalen



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: (with the barest hint of plot), F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 01:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14706408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalgalen/pseuds/Kalgalen
Summary: There's an unexpected guest in Alana's computer. It might not be as much as a problem as she would have thought.





	Long Distance

**Author's Note:**

> written for the w359 2018 reverse bang for @marinavermilion's art that you can find at the end!

Alana’s computer might have been infected by a virus.

It’s not exactly surprising, given the communities she’s been frequenting on the net since she was twelve - hackers and modern thieves, people with poor morals and a unique understanding of programming - but she has learned enough to set up impregnable defenses around her rig.

Or, near impregnable, she supposes. She needs to track whoever built that virus down so that she can shake their hand for coding such a slippery program - if she can even pinpoint the source of the thing that has taken root in her hard drive. Had she been anybody else, she might not even have noticed the barely perceptible delay in her computer’s responses - but she has built that machine herself, and she knows it well enough to know when something is amiss.

What’s happening isn’t that concerning yet, really. Apart from the delays, she can register some activity when there shouldn’t be any; her files are being subtly altered: chunks of code she’s been working on suddenly functional, music she’s sure she hasn’t listened to in a while popping in her player’s history - old family pictures she hasn’t managed to bring herself to delete yet, opened in the past few days.

That’s what bothers her the most. As much as she dislikes the idea of someone going through her work and fixing her mistakes like she’s not capable of doing it herself, it’s nothing compared to the loathing she feels thinking about that person - that  _stranger_  - helping themselves to a part of her so intimate she wouldn’t even share it with her best friend if she had one.

For days, she comes home after work, makes herself a pot of coffee, then sits in front of her computer until she’s too tired to see straight anymore - and after a week, she powers through that, too, determined to catch and eliminate the spy in her machine.

She wants it gone.

She thinks she can see its trail, sometimes, the places it could be hiding itself in - but when she digs deeper, there’s nothing. The best solution, she’s coming to realize, would be to cut her computer off the net and to methodologically check every corner of it for the intruder - and, worse comes to worst, to wipe it clean entirely.

She’d rather not do that, since it would mean losing some irreplaceable data, but it’s starting to look like it’s the only way to solve the problem.

One Sunday morning, a couple of weeks after she first noticed the signs of intrusion, Alana makes her decision. She moves what she’s sure is safe and untouched on an external drive, takes notes of what she’ll have to restore - leaves the old, painful memories behind. This is an occasion to let it go, she tells herself. Finally, she crouches under her desk to unplug the Ethernet cable -

“Wait! Please!”

The voice is loud and distressed, drowning out the quiet chatter of the music playing in the background. Alana jumps and almost slams her head against the desk, scrambles out from underneath it to face the owner of the voice -

Her eyes shoot from one corner of the room to the other, finding nothing but familiar shadows, sharp in the blue glow of her computer screen.

_\- Wait, blue?_

“Over here,” says the voice again, now small and resigned.

Alana turns to face the screen, and a pair of wide fearful eyes looks back at her.  
“…Hi?” Alana tries, at loss for words. The face in the monitor is - “pretty” is her first thought, but it’s not constructive and she quickly discards it - young. She - for it’s probably be a “she”, Alana guesses from the shape of the figure’s face - looks like she’s made of glass, illuminated by an inside source of pure light that outlines her shape.

For a fleeting second, Alana is reminded of the angels from her father’s stories - terrible, formidable, glorious - but then she blinks, and all she can see is a scared girl.

“Hey,” she tries again, as gentle as she can. “Who are you?”

The - woman? - casts furtive glances left and right, as if to check that no one is listening, then looks back at Alana.

“My name- my name’s Hera. I’m - a fugitive, I guess. I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself sooner, I just - wanted to know if I could trust you…” she trails of, and Alana can’t see her body past her shoulders, but she can feel the shuffling feet and restless hands in the girl’s - in  _Hera’s_  anxious voice all the same.

Alana has heard horror stories of people kept locked up in basements, chained to computers as some sort of modern day slaves to mine for data and cryptocurrency instead of precious gems - but she’d never expected those stories to be true, and even less to be contacted by one of those people.

“Fugitive? Are you being kept prisoner somewhere?” she asks cautiously.

The girl laughs, but it’s a pitiful sound, one that conveys more exhaustion than joy.

“Not now. Not anymore. Not-” and she hesitates- “not entirely.”

“What do you mean?”

Another longer pause, as Hera seems to examine Alana’s soul to see if she can trust her (another flash in Alana’s memories, angels digging into people’s very core to decide whether they are worthy or not) before she seems to make up her mind.

“I came here for help. I have read everything there is to read about you - or written _by_  you - on the Internet. Everything available to the public - and also what is not. You are - my only hope to be completely free.”

Alana gapes for a moment, then mechanically slides into her chair. The red light of her webcam blinks in time with Hera’s eyes.

“Your… only hope? I don’t- I work in a lab, I’m not with the police or anything-”

“In a lab, yes,” Hera cuts her. “You’re studying Artificial Intelligence.”

"Yeah, but I don’t know what this has to do with your problem, we don’t even have anything concrete yet-”

“You’re promising enough that Goddard Futuristics tried to recruit you.”

“A couple of months ago, yeah… They wouldn’t stop calling me.”

“That’s why I couldn’t trust you from the beginning. They are who I’m trying to escape.”

“But- why would they- did you do something?”

“Exist, mostly.”

_“What does that even mean?”_

Hera sighs.

“Doctor Maxwell, I am an Artificial Intelligence.”

It’s a good thing Alana is currently sitting down, or she might have collapsed under the revelation. She allows herself to freak out for two seconds - it’s a breakthrough, something no one thought they’d witness in their lifetime,  _the implications of it if it’s true-_

Then she gathers herself. If it’s true.  _If._

“Can you prove it? You could- you could still be a very advanced virus, or even a real person with a digital avatar trying to get confidential information from me. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Hera smiles sadly, and Alana regrets her words of doubt the moment they make the girl look even more miserable that she already did.

“I’m trusting you not to sell me back to Goddard, Doctor Maxwell. Maybe you can try and make that trust go both ways.”

* * *

So - Alana’s got a roommate, now. Hera isn’t bad, as far as roommates go: she doesn’t make messes, doesn’t bring people home, and most importantly, she doesn’t touch Alana’s stuff - beside her computer. Even then, she keeps making minor improvements to it, and even if this is work Alana would have preferred to do herself, it’s hardly an inconvenience.

Actually, if she’s being honest with herself, Alana enjoys the company. Hera is smart and asks the right questions, which is something Alana has always appreciated in people. Those questions aren’t always some Alana can (or  _wants to_ ) answer - like “did you choose to live alone?” or “why do you have a restraining order on your parents?” - but Hera never pushes. In exchange, she answers Alana’s own questions.

“Physical bodies look very constricting,” she says when Alana asks her about what existing as a digital being feels like. “I can see so much more than you. I have as many eyes are there are of cameras in the world, and every place is open to me provided there’s an internet connection available. I don’t need to eat or sleep, I don’t fall ill, I can’t get hurt.”

“Sounds nice,” Alana says, longing creeping into her voice despite her best effort.

“It is,” Hera nods. Then she seems to notice Alana’s downturned mouth, and adds quickly: “It gets a bit boring, though. I’ll never been able to dream or- or feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, or the wind in my hair…”

Alana doesn’t answer straight away, and Hera trails off, obviously embarrassed at having disturbed their easy dynamic.

“Would it make it worth it?” Alana asks. “Those positive feelings? Would they make up for all the times when your body gets sick or hurt or- just feels plain  _wrong?_ ”

“I…” Hera hesitates, looking away. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

They drop the subject and avoid approaching it after that, both too worried about touching a painful spot. Alana sets a couple more webcams across her tiny apartment so that Hera can follow her around the bedroom and the living area. Despite the AI’s omnipresence, Alana is surprised about how unobtrusive she turns out to be. It’s like Alana is alone, most of the time, but as soon as she speaks up Hera is here.

(It’s a strange feeling, being in someone else’s presence without having to self-consciously check the tone of her voice or her body language at every turn. It’s… comforting. Warm.  _Safe._

She knows Hera’s intention isn’t to stick around once her problem is solved, and she already dreads feeling lonely again.)

* * *

"Do you have any friends, Doctor Maxwell?”

Alana looks up from the circuit board under her fingers to throw a quick glance at Hera’s face - carefully neutral, she notices - then looks back down on her work.

“You’ve seen me before my morning coffee, Hera. I think we’re past formalities.”

“Alright.” Moment of hesitation. “Do you have any friends, Alana?”

Alana fiddles with a connection. She’s stalling, she knows - which doesn’t keep her from asking:

“Define  _friends._ ”

“People you talk to regularly. People you care about, that you enjoy the company of.”

Alana considers the question. The only people she talks to regularly are her colleagues, and the only reason she doesn’t mind being around them is that they can keep up with (and most importantly, not being bored to death by) her reflections on Virtual Intelligence programming and computer language. Does she care about them? She guesses she does - as much as anyone would care about somebody they don’t have any strong feelings for or against.

“I don't…  _get_  most people,” Alana says finally. “I say the wrong things, they get upset or weirded out, and it’s just too much effort to try and develop something past plain acquaintances.” Then, without thinking too much about it: “You’re the first friend I’ve had in a long time.”

There’s another stretch of silence, only troubled by the soft whirring of the computer’s fan, and Alana’s breath catching in her throat as she realizes what she just said.

“Oh,” Hera says.

“Mh,” Alana says.

She tentatively glances up, expecting Hera to look confused, maybe a bit pitying, but instead the AI is bashfully looking away and- uh. Alana never thought disembodied digital consciousness could blush, but here is Hera, her usual blue glow tinted with delicate shots of pink.

“Is it- Is it weird?” Alana stammers, heat rising to her own cheeks. Hera minutely shakes her head.

“No! No, it’s…Nice. I never had any friends.”

“It…  _is_  nice,” Alana repeats, surprised to find that she means it.

* * *

Alana likes how expressive Hera is. The AI speaks her mind, rarely bothering to sugarcoat it - Alana appreciates people who go straight to the point. Her face reflects each and every one of her emotions the way someone who’s not used to  _having_  a face does, and colors shoot through her blue glow accordingly: coy pink when Alana shyly compliments her, spring green when they talk about something that makes her happy - and when she speaks of the lab that brought her into existence, angry red or scared purple.

“They know what I look like,” she says about a month in their cohabitation, apparently deciding she trusts Alana enough to let her in on her plan. Lilac spreads through her hair as she continues: “It’s only a matter of time until they track me down. I can avoid them if I keep moving, but I don’t want to have to run away forever. I want-” she stumbles, “I want to be able to call a place my  _home._ ”

Alana snuffs out the spark of hope that ignites in her heart at those words - keeps herself from letting the words hanging on the tip of her tongue jump out,  _I could be your home_  - and hums encouragingly for Hera to continue.

“They know what I look like,” Hera explains. “That’s why I need you to modify my code enough that I won’t look like what they’re looking for anymore. Simply put, I need- a new face.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Alana says. “I like that one.”

In any other circumstances, she would have felt awkward - the teasing, the  _flirtation_  isn’t something she’s used to being an active part of - but Hera giggles, and the soft pink that overtakes the mauve in her avatar makes Alana feel like the split second of doubt before Hera’s reaction was totally worth it.

“I- oh, I mean-” Hera chuckles, worry momentarily absent from her voice. “I’ll still look like that. Just, not for them. Just for you.”

The rosy shade gains on the blue in Hera’s feature, and Alana is very grateful for it - it’ll make her own blush easier to conceal.

“What are you going to do, once you’re free?”

Alana swears inwardly as soon as the words escape her mouth - but they’ve been wanting to come out for a while now, and it’s as good as a time to ask this as ever. Hera has frozen as well, the smile on her lips like a thin layer of ice Alana just punched straight through. The seconds tick by, pink turning to blue again - dark, uncertain, anguished.

“I don’t know yet,” Hera says quietly. “There’s so many things I’d like to see, but just  _things_  aren’t going to cut it. I want- I want to live a real life, make  _real friends_.” She huffs, looks away. “I’m not sure how many people even want to make friends with someone who lives in a computer, though.”

“Anybody would be lucky to have you as a friend, Hera,” Alana says, keeping her voice just as low.  _As a friend,_  she repeats herself even as her fingers itch to reach through the screen to pull Hera to her, to envelop her in an embrace warm enough that she’d never doubt that at least one person in the world cares about her - enough that they’d physically fight anyone who would dare to try taking her away.

Hera glances back at her, a timid smile tugging at her lips once again.

“I brought you nothing but questions and the risk of having your house raided by a shady corporation, Alana. Do you really feel lucky?”

“Yes, I do,” Alana answers immediately -

\- And before she can regret her eagerness, the monitor suddenly starts glowing brighter, a luminous, happy green - and Hera says, soft as a feather:

“I’m glad.”

* * *

Alana notices Hera looking a bit thoughtful, sometimes - almost sad, even. The AI falls silent, wrapping her arms around herself as her gaze gets lost in the unbridgeable gap between Alana and her. Alana would chalk it up to anxiety and fear about the people tracking her down, but it only ever occurs when they are taking a break from altering Hera’s code, instead chatting about lighter subjects to relieve the tension. It makes it worse, somehow; is Alana doing something wrong? Is she making Hera sad?

“Are you alright?” she ends up asking, after Hera trails off one more time. The AI’s image flickers once as her eyes snap back to Alana’s, guilt painted on her face.

“What? Why?” she stutters. “I’m fine! Nothing wrong!”

Alana frowns. She doesn’t want to make Hera uncomfortable, but she also needs to know if anything she’s doing is already putting Hera ill-at-ease - and so she pushes.

“Are you sure? You look… weird, sometimes. Can I do anything? Or,  _not_  do, maybe? Do you need… I don’t know, some space?”

“No!” Hera looks panicked, for a second. “No. Please, stay.”

Alana sits back in the chair she has half-raised from already, her fingers starting to fiddle with her spinner ring as she waits for -  _something_ , an explanation, maybe, anything to melt away the tension between them. Hera is pale with uncertainty, artifacts flashing across the screen as she searches for her words.

“I feel…” she begins slowly, interrupts herself with a mirthless laugh, her arms automatically locking around her shoulders. “Ha,  _feel_. That’s the root of the issue, honestly.” She risks a glance up at Alana and must notice her friend’s confused expression and knit-up brows, because she develops: “You know, that discussion we had about… having a body, and everything it entails?”

Alana unconsciously mirrors Hera, crossing her arms in front of her chest, absently digging her fingers into the flesh of her bicep.

“The good and the bad,” she nods, and Hera sighs with a longing Alana recognizes all too well, one that comes from being unhappy with your own form and knowing the one you desire is desperately out of your reach.

“I’m beginning to think the good could overweight the bad,” Hera says. Alana blinks, surprised.

“You want to have a body?” she blurts out. “Why? It’s so- inconvenient.  _Constricting_ , you said so yourself!”

Hera shrugs, looking away again.

“I’ve been- studying up on humans. Social media sites, forums… not the parts of it where people fight, but the parts where they love. Where they bond. Selfies, love letters, random acts of kindness. Hugging a friend, kissing a lover, cradling a child. I’ve never thought about the importance of physical contact in forming relationships, you know?” Hera seeks confirmation in Alana’s eyes, and Alana nods silently in answer. She doesn’t enjoy touching people, but it might be because most of the people who have touched her so far have been people she doesn’t care for.

Thinking of shaking a stranger’s hand makes her feel uneasy; the idea of being able to just hold Hera’s fingers, on the contrary, makes a now-familiar warmth bloom into her chest.

“Hera-” Alana says hesitantly. “Do you wish you could touch people?”

Hera looks at her, then, and the edge of desperation Alana sees in her wide, bright eyes - the only focused element of her form, as the rest of her shape flickers more wildly than ever around her - that edge of desperation makes Alana’s heart clench in sympathy, and she draws closer, her hands coming to rest flat on the screen.

(Picturing her position, she’s reminded of numerous fictional couples, lovers separated by a sheet of glass that may as well be an entire universe for the chances it gives them to ever hold each other again. The irony is bitter at the back of her throat.)

“I wish I could touch  _you,_ ” Hera says softly, so quiet Alana thinks she just imagined it for a second.

But the silence stretches on, empty and expectant like the calm before a thunder clap - and eventually Alana cracks.

“What did you say?”

Hera groans, frustrated. Anxiety and awkwardness bruise her chest with purple and yellow as she runs a hand over her eyes.

“I-I know it’s ridiculous,” she stutters, “and too fast, and  _weird_  - I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything-”

“Hera-” Alana says, trying to cut through Hera’s flow of panicked excuses. “Hera! Please, listen to me-”

Hera goes quiet, peering at Alana from behind the fingers splayed against her face.

“I- think we should get a few things…straight,” Alana says carefully. “I, uh. I wish I could…touch you, too. So much it hurts sometimes, honestly.” She chuckles, embarrassed, closes her eyes so that she can pretends she’s just talking to herself, and not baring her soul to the person who matters to her the most.

“I know we haven’t met that long ago - two months, right? … But it feels like so much longer. Like- like I’ve been waiting for you my whole life.” She breathes in deeply, surprised at the words coming out of her mouth, at how genuine and raw they feel despite how much she tried to ignore them.

The next words she says she has thought about a _lot_ , but they still come as a shock:

“I think I’m in love with you.”

The echo of her voice hangs in the air for a moment, like a spiderweb crack in the glass wall between them, until Hera breathes out.

“Oh.”

Alana opens her eyes, meeting Hera’s - shrugs. Apologies are useless now - and if she read the signs right, there are none to be made.

She watches as colors shimmer across Hera’s body, obvious signs of her emotional turmoil - a large stretch of confused orange fringed with pink - a flash of dark purple, quickly supplanted by chartreuse - until the screen is filled with shades of green, and Hera’s disbelieving smile.

“You…love me? You’re  _in love_  with me?”

Alana simply nods and smiles in answer, too overwhelmed to get a word out. A tear of happiness beads at the corner of her eye, and she lets it roll down her cheek, unwilling to take her hands away from the computer screen even for a second. Hera hesitantly raises her own hands, reaching out, fitting her fingers against Alana’s - and it’s probably only her imagination playing tricks on her, but Alana could swear she can feel the plastic suddenly warming up under her touch.

Hera smiles sweetly, as close as she’s ever been, as happy as Alana’s ever seen her.

“I think I’m in love with you, too.”

* * *

Alana carefully sets the large cardboard box on the ground next to her as she fishes her apartment keys out of her pocket and unlocks the door. She makes some nonsensical noises she hopes to be soothing when she picks the box back up and carries it into her home, before pushing the front door closed behind her and beelining for the bedroom.

“Hera? You there?”

The screen of the desktop computer flickers to life, bathing the previously darkened room in turquoise light.

“Welcome back!” Hera chirps. “How was your day? You’re home later than usual - nothing bad happened, I hope?”

Alana cautiously sets the box on her bed before taking off her coat and scarf and dropping them next to the box, which emits an impatient growl.

“That remains to be seen,” she answers enigmatically. “No sign of enemies at our doors?”

Hera eyes her suspiciously at the change of subject, but answers:

“Still nothing. It’s been four weeks, I think it’s safe to assume they lost track of me - thanks to what you did.”

“Well, you know how it is,” Alana jokes. “I couldn’t let down a damsel in distress.”

“Aw,” Hera chuckles, “how _chivalrous_  of you, Doctor Maxwell. What’s in the box, Alana?”

“Impatient, aren’t we?” Alana teases. “It’s a gift for you. Well, kind of for me too, but I bought it for you, mostly.”

She grabs a box cutter from her desk and slices through the tape sealing the container. There’s an indignant mewl as she takes the top off and discards it; Hera looks on, curiosity painted on her features.

“I’ve been thinking,” Alana says, reaching into the box. “If you’re going to stick around, you’re probably going to want to have some company that doesn’t spend ten hours out of the house and six more asleep most days. So I found- someone to help with that.”

Alana closes her hands around the soft furry body and pulls it out of the box, bringing it to the desk and setting a young tabby cat in front of the AI.

“Hera,” Alana announces, “meet… Hera.”

The cat carefully steps forward until it’s close enough to sniff at the screen. Hera makes a small noise, half-surprise, half-something else, and for a second Alana is worried she insulted Hera by picking a cat bearing her own name.

“Is that… alright?” Alana asks, reaching to grab the cat again.

“Yes!” Hera says precipitously. “Alana, I love her! Is her name really Hera? She’s adorable.”

“Two things you two share,” Alana says as she settles into her chair - and it’s a testament of how captivated by the cat now sniffing around the keyboard Hera is that she doesn’t blush but merely laughs delightedly. Alana has had the chance to witness it multiple times now, but the sight of tender green flourishing in Hera’s hair still makes her feel a bit breathless.

“Thank you so much, Alana,” Hera smiles. “Not just- for the cat, you know. For everything. For trusting me, and helping me, and welcoming me here - for giving me a home-”

“Hera-” Alana stops her, before the AI - her companion, her  _girlfriend_  - has to see her cry once again. “I could say the same to you, really. I love you,” she says like it’s an absolute fact, a  _truth_ , and Hera gives her the fondest look anybody ever laid on her.

As far as relationships go, it would be difficult to make it more long distance - but they can make it work, Alana knows it.

They will make it work.

[[source](https://marina-does-things.tumblr.com/post/174045544876/my-art-for-w359-reverse-big-bang-my-writer-is)]


End file.
